Blogs

Today me and Ms. Hanife met in the Global Studio to start working on Turkish. I

thought that our first session is going to be easy, but even though it was the first

session I was truly challenged. Me and my language partner immediately started

speaking in Turkish and I was impressed when I realized that I could understand

most of what she says. I realized that I can understand a lot of Turkish but I have

difficulties speaking it. One of my goals as I mentioned in my learning plan is to be

able to better communicate in Turkish so I told Ms. Hanife how I would like to focus

on speaking/listening. During our first session we revised some of our covered

material from last semester and we are not off to a good start. I realized that I still

had minor difficulties with certain topics from last semester but I believe that I will

comprehend as we revise them even more this semester. This week, we worked on

some grammar, revised previous semester’s concepts, and listened to Turkish songs.

Ms. Hanife told me about this one very famous Turkish singer Sertab Erener. This

singer is not only famous in Turkey but throughout Europe because she won on the

Eurovision contest. We listened to a few of her songs, and I would read the lyrics off

the screen while she was singing. I tried to sing along but I found her songs to be fast

so I could not catch up with her. Ms. Hanife gave me an electronic book that contains

short Turkish stories that are written for Turkish learners and assigned me to read

three stories. She also gave me a book that talks about Turkish famous food and the

text is written in both Turkish and English. In my opinion it is very important that

the text is translated to English as well because this is how I can refer to unknown

words that I have trouble with. Also, Ms. Hanife told me about this translator called

Tureng which is apparently much more accurate than Google translate, it gives not

only synonyms but also detailed explanation of each word and its usage. I think it

will be very helpful in my further learning.

I also learned about this expression “oof ya” that apparently Turkish people use

in everyday language. I heard of it before and my former roommates would often

use it, but for some reason I thought that it was a bad word. However, this week I

learned that it is actually not a bad word but Turkish people use it when they are

either annoyed or when they hear something that they did not expect to hear. Later

this week, I said this to my Turkish friend that I work with and he found it very

funny that I used it because only Turks use it and he was really surprised when he

heard it. He said I am embracing Turkish culture to the fullest. This actually gave me

motivation to work harder.

As weeks pass by I can tell that my Turkish is improving a lot. And this is not only my opinion but my

Turkish friends say the same. I have several Turkish friends here on campus and they always force me

to talk to them in Turkish. I work with three Turks, and whenever I have the same shift with them we

speak in Turkish. One of my friends Idil who is from Cyprus and who speaks Turkish very often talks to

me in Turkish. We share the same opinion about Turkish, as you can see in the picture below. Idil wrote

“Turkce ogrenmek cok eglenceli” which means “Learning Turkish is fun”, and I completely agree with

her.

During our Turkish sessions, Ms. Hanife always tries to make class interesting. We do not only focus on

grammar or learning vocabulary, but we also love to talk about culture. Ms. Hanife told me that Turkish

people make wonderful delights and cookies but I thought that no culture has better deserts than my

culture. However, I went out with Idil to get groceries and I picked up a bag of cookies that I used to eat

back home. When I showed them to Idil she told me that they were from Turkey. I always loved them

but never knew that they are actually made in Turkey. So I got several bags of those cookies. I realized

that Turkish people make wonderful cookies. I also tried famous Turkish delights, and they are much

different from Bosnian delights. You can eat Turkish delights while drinking coffee, for breakfast or even

late at night. For me, they are not super sweet and I like it.

This week we worked on grammar and also revised some concepts from last semester. I was really

happy when I learned and completely comprehended how to say “I was tired” “I was happy”, everything

in the past. This concept was very confusing for me and I had a hard time understanding it. However, I

am pretty confident right now. This material is of crucial importance for me and I believe me and Ms.

Hanife did a great job this week. I also read some short stories on my own, and watched my favorite

Turkish TV show “Dudaktan Kalbe”.

I checked what we are going to work on next and I was terrified. Next week we have to work on –

mis, -mus grammar tense which is something that does not exist neither in English nor in Bosnian. It

is a grammar tense that you use when you hear somebody say/do something, basically when you are

reporting something to someone or when you are telling a story. I am sure that this is going to be a very

hard concept for me, and I have to make sure that I work very hard to understand this concept because

apparently this is a very common tense in Turkish. We will see how it goes next week.

I have already taken 2 Turkish classes at the University of Richmond and I can say

that I have learned a lot. I believe that I can get by with my Turkish language. As I

mentioned in my previous learning plans, I visited Turkey a few years ago and I was

impressed with the culture and I would love to live there one day. Also, I had two

Turkish roommates and through conversation with them, I have learned a lot about

Turkey. Turkish culture is very much similar to Bosnian culture, where I come from.

This semester I am planning to improve my Turkish language. I have talked to Ms.

Hanife, my language partner, and we created learning plans. Last semester we got a

Turkish book (Ders kitabi and Calisma kitabi) that we used and I can tell that it is a

really good edition and that it helped me learn a lot. Ms. Hanife also likes the book

because it is very organized and explains topics in detail. The book covers grammar

in details (I am mostly concerned about grammar), then there is a lot of reading

assignments, practice problems and vocabulary. Last semester we covered about

half the book (because we are working very hard), and our plan for this semester is

to finish the rest of it. I know that there is a lot to cover and that chapters are going

to get harder and that I will have to work much more to comprehend all the material

to be able to continue my Turkish in the future, that is once I graduate. Since we are

going to follow the book, that is; we are covering chapter by chapter, for each class

we know exactly what we need to cover so I can come to class prepared and with

questions that I do not understand so I can ask Ms. Hanife for further explanation.

Also, we have a work book that I am planning to work on my own and have

assignments checked by Ms. Hanife. This way, we can utilize our time most

efficiently and focus most of our time on conversation. We are planning to cover one

chapter per week. We decided to meet twice a week, Thursdays and Fridays. This

will allow me to prepare over the weekend and finish any assignments that I am

given during our meeting sessions. Also, once in every two weeks, we will have a

class where I will read Turkish short stories in class, so that Ms. Hanife can correct

my pronunciation and then we will listen to Turkish songs and read poems in

Turkish. After reading, we will of course analyze what we have read to check for my

understanding and learn new vocabulary. My goal is to really improve my Turkish

and learn a lot of grammar. Last semester I figured out that Turkish is such a

complicated language, completely different from any language that I have attempted

to learn so far. There are so many exceptions in this language that sometimes I feel

very overwhelmed. However, I think it is the beauty of the language and I feel like I

need to take on the challenge. Ms. Hanife believes that the book we are using is

going to give me the full challenge and I am excited about it (and a little bit scared as

well). I hope to excel in Turkish grammar, learn a lot of vocabulary, practice a lot

and of course learn a lot about Turkish culture.

I believe that the goals I have set are challenging but feasible. With proper time

management, organization and dedication I can tell that by the end of semester I

will improve a lot and be able to engage in Turkish conversation with my Turkish

friends. I am excited about taking this course and looking forward to improving my

Turkish.

Azmain and I decided to cover a Korean pop song by our one of our favorite girl groups, 2NE1. The song is called 'Come Back Home' and this is its unplugged version. We both have no music training at all, but singing this song was still a very fun and educating experience. Hope you all like it!  Come%20Back%20Home%20Cover.mp3

The cultural competence article was an interesting read with some good points that we have also touched on during our class discussion. I like the part of the article that discusses conversation analysis and how there are rule of conversation. However, these rules are not fully known or comprehended until we are proficient in our language skill and culture. Communication is most effective when we understand each other’s body language and social norms. I think the only way this can be fully attained is to travel or live abroad.

I hope to travel to India someday soon to augment my language skills as well as learn more about the people and culture. Once, I have a better understanding of traditions, social norms, and body language, I think my communication will be easier and faster. Often, people from India bob their head in response to a yes or no question. However, this is very vague and people are left with an unanswered question. People in India are used to this and understand what the head bob means. It’s little things like this that would help our communication.

As an international student in the United States, I am aware of the culture shock phenomenon, and could therefore greatly identify with the 'Culture Shock' video. It was heartening to hear other students voice concerns which I faced (and sometimes still face) but did not talk much about. Away from family, friends and culture, all of us international students try to ignore any sort of 'shock' we might be feeling as a coping mechanism. We often confuse denial of this understandable feeling with a way to enable a better fitting into the new culture. The differences that made me feel alienated were not only cultural, but academic as well. That threw me of a bit, because I used to think that even if it took me a while to find a close group of friends, I would at least have a good understanding of my studies. Therefore, the students from the video were very relatable when they were talking about their academic struggles.

Just as there is a big difference between Indian and American culture, there is an equal if not bigger difference between Indian and Korean culture. Both countries have unique cultural and social practices, and I also lack interaction experience with many native Koreans. Since there is not a very big Indian population in Korea, this problem might be mutual. As I progress with my Korean language learning, I realize how different Korean is from either Hindi or English, and therefore I went through a sort of culture shock when I had to adjust my brain's methods of dealing with languages to accommodate a learning plan for such a different language. A good quality of the self-directed learning course is that it encourages not only learning the structure of a language but also the history, culture, and society of the language's native population. Therefore, my culture shock towards Korean is limited to not only learning how to speak and write it, but also its usage in Korea. I plan to go for study abroad to South Korea next year, and I believe my early experience with Korean language and culture will incredibly enhance my experience there and help me deal and reduce the culture shock I may experience.

After watching "Culture Shock" I realized that most of the international students face the problems that I have encountered after coming to the US. I could relate to almost all of the problems the students were talking about in the video. In Bangladesh, I had studied in a school where all the classes were taught in English from Kindergarten to Grade 12, I had always thought that I was quite fluent in that language and would not have any problem of communication in English.

However, after coming here I realized that the English that I was taught in school was British which sometimes made a lot difference in spoken English. I noticed there are many many words which are pronounced differently in US than what I was familiar with. During first few months of my freshmen year, I would participate less in class because I was never sure whether I would be pronouncing words properly.

I could also relate to the difficulty people faced due to the different system of education. Class discussions and participation grades were novel to me. Moreover, my First Year Seminar paper was the first paper that I had written in my life.

I also had a difficult time making friends. I felt that I had no idea what the American students were talking about most of the time. Firstly, most of the expressions they used in conversations were absolutely new to me. In addition, I was not familiar with the entertainment industry in the US. Thus I would be totally lost when people would discuss their favorite shows, movies or songs. However, I never let myself dwell on my struggles too much and would try to be busy all the time. This probably prevented me from falling into depression and feeling homesick. 

I have been watching korean dramas for a couple of years. As I watched the dramas with english subtitles, I have learned to say some of the most commonly used words and phrases in korean by myself. 

For instance:

I am sorry: Bianhaeyo / Chaesonghaeyo / Chaesonghamnida

I like: Chuahae

Thank you: Khamsahamnida

When: onjae

Where: Odiya

Why: Uwae

really: chincha / chommal

Okay: Arrasseoyo / kuraeyo

No: Andwae 

Happy: Haengboghan

Pretty: Yeppo

Busy: Bappeun

I am hungry: Bhaegoppa

Wait a minute: Chamkanman

And many more...

Although I do not know the exact number of korean words that I have learned I feel like whatever I have learned can be used in daily conversation. Also, the meetings with my language partner has helped me correct my pronunciation as well as explain the structure and rules. 

I have noticed that I remembers words better when they are in sentences and are associated to certain situations. Therefore, instead of learning a list of vocabulary, I plan on learning phrases and sentences which can be used in daily life. Hence, my learning goal for this semester is to learn how to talk about oneself, buy things, order food, ask for directions, talk to people about their likes and dislikes and address people appropriately. I have realized that it is difficult to learn reading, writing and speaking at the same pace. As a result, my realistic goals are to learn the basic rules of reading and writing and focus more on the speaking skills.     

Over break Louise had us write a paper about a topic that we that we knew a lot about in the Swedish culture or something we had never heard of. I chose to write a topic about St. Martin's day. The history of this is when St. Martin tried to hide to avoid being ordained . In order to do so he hid in a goose pen. But the geese made ​​noises and people found him . He celebrates his name day in November. This is the month when the geese are ready to kill it also was an important medieval autumn party. The practice came to Sweden from France. This feeding of geese is most popular in the south of Sweden in a place called Skåne where many of them are farmers. A lot of people like to eat black soup with goose. There is no tradition to eating soup with goose but a lot of people think it tastes really good. St. Martin's Day is similar to American groundhog's day. In the sense of it's silly tradition.  If it was snowing on St. Martin's day there would be no snow for Christmas. If the holiday was on a Friday or Saturday, the winter of that year would be hard. Now more about what you do on the holiday. Some people cook goose in their homes but most people go to a restaurant. There is a lot of food on the day and all parts of the goose was used. The dinner begins with black soup, made ​​of goose blood and goose broth. It has also purees and spices. The soup is thick, red, and black. Things such as : goose liver sausage , prunes and potatoes are also eaten. The goose tends to have things like apples and prunes inside.

So I feel like I am at a standstill with Swedish. We are in a more advanced level and in advanced levels you need to speak more. The problem is I am so terrified of speaking that whenever we try I figure out a way to avert attention or change the topic. I was super motivated a few weeks ago to practice speaking every day but life got in the way and I just stopped. Recently we have been reading articles and having to summarize them for class. The problem is I feel like it isn't helping me at all because I don't know what most of the article is saying, so then I go to google translate, which is kind of defeating the purpose. Also another frustrating thing is that I need to start learning more verbs. But then I go to learn more verbs and get so confused with the semantics of grammar that I tell myself that I will come back to it later. Also I feel like vocab tends to be easier because when learning about fruit there are so many vocab words that go under the category of fruit. But how does one do that with verbs? There is no real over arching category for that. I think I am just a point of frustration because I feel like I am not getting better, due to no one's fault of my own. But I am not quite sure what to do to get passed this point.

Over spring break:

-Malory and I Skyped: We spoke in Swedish about what we had been doing over break and what we had planned to do. We got to practice using verbs in various tenses as well as framing questions for one another. It was fun and relaxed so I think both of us felt really comfortable speaking Swedish with one another.

-Translating articles: We both had to find/read/translate five articles in Swedish and then summarize them. The reading part is not too bad and I think it helps with my vocabulary. The part that is trickier is summarizing because it really forces you to understand what you are reading and put it in your own words (in Swedish, of course!).

-Reading/summarizing about Swedish culture/traditions: I feel like now I know everything there is to know about Swedish culture!!!

-Using verbs in various tenses: This is important for me right now because I know a lot of verbs in the present and infinitive but often can't remember/just don't know how to use the verb in the past tense. So when talking about what I had done/eaten/seen over break it was helpful that I had reviewed those common verbs in the past tense as well. I am very thankful that you don't have to conjugate verbs in Swedish like you do in Spanish. Oy vey!

-Watching Bron/other videos: I made a friend on the airplane coming back from Spain because I was watching Bron. It's still kind of hard to process what they're saying because the accents are pretty strong, but I'm definitely getting better.

This week:

-Talking to Louise entirely in Swedish about our breaks: Like when Skyping with Mal, this was helpful because I had to use my grammar/vocab skills to come up with things I had done over break. I think forcing myself to speak in Swedish is necessary in order to be successful in gaining language skills.

-Listening/translating Louise's stories/break: This was the best activity because for the most part I could follow along with what Louise was saying and then could ask if I didn't know a word. Then I added those words to my list of words to learn! Louise was very instructive through this process because she would stop to ask if we understood, and she would purposefully use words she thought we knew or would be able to figure out, and then she would gesticulate a lot in order to demonstrate what she was talking about. I really think we should be doing more of this because ultimately I want to be able to understand what the Anderssons are saying!

-Listening homework: We went on Youtube to find videos of people speaking Swedish and then translated. This was helpful because for the most part I could understand what they were saying. I picked a video of a young woman who was learning Swedish in order to move there-- so I think I could understand her better than if I had chosen a native speaker because she sounds more like I do when I try to speak! Even still, I had to stop and figure out what words she was saying and got an overall understanding of what she was trying to articulate to her audience.

Side note: Over the summer I purchased the first set of Rosetta Stone so I could practice. Before working with Louise and Malory in the fall I did about the first section of my program and then pushed it aside when I started getting homework from Louise! Just out of curiosity and because I wanted to see where I stand today, I started going through the chapters of my Rosetta Stone this afternoon. I really do think that I'm at the point now with my Swedish that I could get some benefit from doing maybe the last two chapters of my Rosetta Stone and then I would either have to stop or get the next package/level. I'm really excited by how far I have come!!

I found the article on communicative competence to be quite interesting and had a lot of overlap on what we have discussed in class. I think that when learning a new language it is important to recognize that people from different cultures may interpret a sentence differently than one would expect. Specifically this article refers to the phrase "I didn't like the casserole"and how this sentence alone can be interpreted as an apology or an insult. When learning a new language it is important to try and understand how phrases like this could be misinterpreted. I believe that this is the most frustrating part of learning a new language. 

In the section on conversation analysis, I had never given much thought to the rules of conversation. This is extremely important when learning a new language, but I believe it can never really be learned until one immerses themselves into the culture in which they are studying. It is hard to understand the rules of conversation of another culture unless you are physically there. I think another challenge would be to adjust from your own culture's rules of conversation.

Finally, I found the part on gender and language to be interesting in terms of how this is different in each culture. This difference would be most vastly seen in cultures where women are not valued as highly as men. I don't think that this would be the case in Israel because men and women have equal rights, but I think this would be something to take note of if someone were learning the language of a country where women do not have the same rights as men. Overall I found this article to be interesting and it touched upon many of the themes from our class discussions.

After meeting with Dr. Scinicariello to review my progress so far, I have adjusted my learning plan to be more specific to what I have learned and where I want to be by the end of the semester. I have decided that I would rather focus on reading and writing rather than speaking. I want to be able to speak a little bit, but to me I find I enjoy reading and writing more so than speaking. We discussed having 5 topics of interest that we would go over with Emily and they are:

1. Greetings

2. Family

3. Food/meals/how to order in a restaurant

4. Leisure activities 

5. Weather

For each of these goals I will describe the task and activity of achieving the goals. 

Task: know how to greet people and introduce myself

Activity: I will learn from Emily how to properly greet people and introduce myself and will practice using the YouTalk App

Task: know how to describe my family

Activity: I will draw a picture of my family and use the vocabulary I learned from Emily to describe them

Task: know how to describe parts of a meal/what goes on the dinner table

Activity: I will learn the appropriate vocabulary from Emily and draw a dinner plate and describe the various objects. I will also use the YouTalk App to practice the new vocabulary

Task: know how to talk about things I do with my free time 

Activity: Using vocabulary Emily has taught me I will draw a planner filling the days with things I like to do for fun

Task: learn how to describe the weather

Activity: I will watch YouTube clips of weather reports from Israel. I will also ask Emily to teach me some common words/phrases about weather. I will draw and describe some weather from a scene 

For my third artifact, I am posting a learning exercise that Emily and I did. In this exercise, she wrote down some words in English and some words in Hebrew and I had to come up with their meanings. These were all words we had studied before so it worked. It was very helpful, and it basically just felt like a big, ungraded quiz. 

My second artifact is an example of my flashcards. Every week, Emily and I read and I write down all the vocabulary in the paragraph or 2 that we just read. On the front of the flashcard I write the hebrew pronunciation and the hebrew spelling, and on the back I write what it means in English. This has proven to be a very successful exercise for me and has helped me to "store" a lot of words in my brain!

This is a picture of one of my first quizzes. Every week, Emily and I do either 5 or 10 word quizzes and I am  graded on them. I have to get above an 80 on every quiz (which I have done on all except 1!!) or else I have to retake them. This quiz was on prepositions and conjunctions and vocabulary that was used in the book to explain those types of words. I got a 100% on it :) and I also got all the spelling right just by using my knowledge, I didn't have any of it memorized! So this was a great quiz for me.

Because I studied Hebrew last semester, my goals for this semester were very high. I wanted to make a lot of progress in terms of my familiarity with the language and my ability to read fluently. Most of my goals are not specific, but rather mark an improvement in my familiarity with Hebrew and fluency in reading, writing and speaking.

• Goal 1: To begin to read without vowels (as adult Hebrew-speakers do)
• Goal 2: To improve my speech and pronunciation and be more comfortable speaking
• Goal 3: To become more comfortable writing, and be able to spell words by guessing their spelling
• Goal 4: To be able to have a short conversation about a specific topic with my tutor (i.e. food)
• Goal 5: To be able to have a conversation with my best friend in Israel that is partially in Hebrew

To work on my first goal, Emily and I have been doing a lot of reading (with vowels). When we come across words I do not know, I write them down on flashcards and put them into a pile. I look over those flashcards in between meetings to become familiar with the words. When Emily quizzes me on them (I will attach a quiz as an artifact), I write down the answers, doing my best with the spelling and vowel usage. I have found that on my last couple of quizzes, I have stopped including the vowels in my spelling. It is much easier to write without them and I am comfortable enough with Hebrew that I can reread what I have written without the vowels. This feels like a huge accomplishment and one that was a goal of mine, but I still did not think that I would achieve it!

To work on my second goal, Emily and I have been repeating the words that I read in my workbook or on the internet. This is probably the goal that I have done least well on throughout the first part of the semester. We speak the words that I do not know, and I repeat them as I write them down, but we have not spent a lot of time or paid a lot of attention to fluency in speaking. We do not have conversations in Hebrew (although I am definitely not at this level yet), or even try to. For the second half of the semester, my goal is to learn phrases and words in Hebrew that relate to my final project (which will be on food) and know enough that I can organically string them together in a couple of sentences.

To work on my third goal, I write down every word that Emily and I read. I have made flashcards of every single word we have encountered, and I rewrite them and look at the spelling and vowel use. When I have quizzes, it is my job to repeat the words and to spell them correctly. I have found that my spelling is getting much better and I no longer need to memorize the spellings of words, I can just guess using the knowledge that I have - and I am usually right! This is a great feeling.

To work on my fourth goal, I really need to do more. Emily and I have been reading though my workbook and occasionally articles on the internet and that is where I have gotten my vocabulary. We felt that was more organic than trying to focus on specific subjects. However, I do want to be able to have a short conversation about one specific subject, and so I think we are going to start learning more phrases and words related to only one  topic in an attempt to increase my fluency, even if it is just in one subject.

To work on my fifth and final goal, I think all of the work I have been doing this semester culminates in my ability or inability to fulfill this goal. All of the fluency exercises that I use every week will determine if I can comfortably communicate with a native speaker. I am so excited to try this out!! 

20140429_220524.jpg

I found the Cultural Competence reading very interesting. It further proved that learning a language means more than knowing the vocabulary and the grammar. Perfecting a language goes beyond that. 

It is important to know the culture of the language one's studying. What I found especially interesting was the part about categorizing cultural competence into four different ones: grammatical, discourse, sociolinguistics and strategic competence. Knowing the language's culture is especially important when it comes to the sociolinguistic component of cultural competence. For example, when conversing with a Pakistani, there are some topics that should not be discussed. Knowing them is important to avoid problems like offending the person in front of you. Some of the taboo topics are the conflicts between Sunni and Shia, homosexuality and, interestingly enough, how one can relate back to the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).